Aussie Pirates Have Another Year Not To Worry About Warnings

An anonymous reader shares an article on TorrentFreak: Internet pirates in Australia may now have at least another year, possibly longer, not to worry about a "three strikes" style system landing on their shores. According to Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton, copyright holders and ISPs will give the new site blocking regime a chance to get established before revisiting the graduated response. Somewhat explains why this gentleman -- if he was indeed downloading copyright infringing content -- has been able to get away with all the torrenting he has done.

Comments

Election time.

[mjwx]

What is important to note here is that within the next 12 months Australia will hold a federal election.

The increasing unpopularity of the Turnbull government (which was really just the Abbott government with a new hat) means that there will likely be a change in parties even if Bill Shorten isn't replaced.

The media conglomerates are considerably more chummy with the current Liberal party (dont let the name confuse you, they're conservatives) than they do with the opposition (Labor party). Doubly so as one of the primary drivers is Rupert Murdoch's media empire which has not won any favours with Labor in recent years.

With Labor back in power, we can expect the same thing that's been happening for years to continue. It will be discussed, papers will be filed, faults will be found with perspective new laws and it'll have to be put off until Parliament sits again in a few months, rinse and repeat.

Re:Election time.

[dwywit]

You're awfully confident that Murdoch won't repeat previous strategies. And, current poll results notwithstanding, memories of the Rudd/Gillard disasters are still fresh.

Turnbull may be losing popularity, but I haven't seen anything like the divisiveness we had under Abbott, Rudd, and to a lesser extent, Gillard. Both parties need that divisiveness to polarise the vote and keep the public rhetoric flowing, so they can concentrate on the swinging/undecided vote. If neither of them can whip up a frenzy, then the election will favour the incumbents.

Something not quite right about that title

[Anonymous Coward]

Aussie Pirates Too Lazy To Use A VPN Have Another Year Not To Worry About Warnings

FTFY

Re:They just don't get it, do they?

[Moof123]

Yep. Look at Cuba where there no is no internet as such. Sneaker net becomes the default.

Personally I just wish the media companies would not make the real deal so lousy. All the crap you are forced to watch or fiddle a way around to watch s DVD or Blu-Ray is really obnoxious. I should never get a "That operation is currently prohibited" message.

Pay for "Ad-Free" Hulu? Only some of the shows are actually ad-free. WTF?

I really want to shield my kid from as much advertising crap as I can as long as I can, or at least until he has some basic critical thinking skills, but it is very hard to actually get get around ads, previews, etc.

But guess what? If I pirate the same stuff it is already stripped of this crap. Being a law abiding citizen really makes me and many others feel like real chumps.

Re:They just don't get it, do they?

[kheldan]

Put an antenna on your house for free OTA TV, get TiVo, turn on the 30-second skip feature, teach your kid how to use it to skip past commercials, and he'll be shielded from about 95% of all the advertisements. You can't really get around product placement in the shows themselves though but it's better than nothing.

Re:Copyright

[PhunkySchtuff]

Some of it was likely legal, some of it was likely to be illegal torrents...
From the actual article:

And then the downloads began: 14 seasons of MythBusters; 24 seasons of The Simpsons; the entire Wikipedia database; Microsoft software for his job; updates for his Xbox games; and "a lot of random other stuff". He also synced all his Spotify playlists offline.

Now, I'm sure it's possible to get some of that content legally, but at around $30/season for TV content through iTunes (just as an example, not saying this is where it came from), you're looking at over $1000 worth of content there.

As an amusing fact, the free data Sunday ran on the same day that Daylight Saving time ended, meaning he actually had 25 hours in which to suck down unlimited 4GX mobile data...